I almost put an exclamation point after the title. But no, let’s keep it calm.

Stephen Stills, in “Daylight Again,” wrote these words, “When everyone’s talking, and nobody’s listening, how can we decide?”

Many monasteries have the reminder, “Please Keep Silence” on signs around the sanctuary entrances, in hallways, and other places. Visting school children see the signs, point, look at each other, giggle, and try. Others ignore the signs altogether or speak in stage whispers that don’t fool anyone.

Silence is wonderful. Silence is dangerous. Silence is ambiguous (I was taught by my parents, “Better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and romove any doubt.”).

But silence is also wise. By itself, it is only quietness. Combined with a focus on God and others, it is powerful. It produces great ideas, patience, love, connectedness, kindness. If I’m yelling at you, you are not going to listen. If I am lecturing you, you won’t hear (and the thought crosses my mind to remind you that this blog is a “suggestion,” not a lecture).

In meditation, we sit and breathe. We focus. We sit as erect as is comfortable. We watch thoughts come and go, and with experience grows the knowledge that some of them will stick around. We learn patience with ourselves, with others.

Silence is scary, because it strips away opinion, false self, masks, and leaves us only staring into our deepest self. We see the ugly inside us. We see what God sees (Meister Eckhart: “the eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me”).

It’s been noisy this week. Understandably so. We are, as a people, trying hard to figure out how to end gun violence. Some say it’s the guns; others say it’s mental health. I wonder how many people have sat in silence around this question? Why not? It’s not as though anyone has come up with the genius that will settle things once and for all.

I’m not advocating for silence as a permanent way of life (although we could do with a few more contemplative voices in the cacaphony). Those who think prayer is a waste of time have already stopped reading. Those who think action has to be as swift as we wish God’s justice would be should study carefully the Civil Rights’ Movement.

I was fortunate enough at 18 years old to be introduced to a man who had marched with Dr. King at all the major Civil Rights events. Still green and with straw sticking out of my hair, I asked him, like a doting child, “How did you do it? How did you take all the abuse, violence, hatred, and keep going?” He looked at me what I remember to be a mixture of wanting to get a gnat out of your face and compassion and said what I have remembered all these years later:

We didn’t just show up and march. If you were going to be part of the non-violent movement, you had to come for worship, prayer, Bible study, connection to God and to each other. We weren’t just doing this because we thought it was a good idea. We did it because we had spent time with God, read the Word, and were grounded in Jesus, love, and compassion. Even for those poor people who were standing on the sides of the roads.

There is no action we can take, no ideas that we can put forward, to solve the insanity that we now find ourselves part of. Because we are part of it, no matter which side we land on. Gun violence and its aftermath has become the American Way of Life.

Whatever action we take, on either side, had better have a big ol’ slice of God in it, or nothing permanent will happen. If you think God wants you to have an assault rifle, spend some time holding onto something – some One – older than the Second Ammendment. If you think God needs to use an assault rifle on all those who own them, you might want to think of One who taught you that love is the way.

Either way, before another word is written, before any more hate comes spewing forth from the Left or the Right, somebody, somewhere, needs to be silent. Not forever, but for real (thank you, Bob Franke).